Summer's Arrived, But We're Leaving...Again

Time is melting like wax on this fine summer day, as Groom and I pack for Art on the Green in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We recently returned home from a fabulous Salem Art Fair and having practically sold out (of stock, not our values), we have what a friend describes as “a better set of problems.” The good news about selling well at an art show is that the rent is paid for another month. The bad news about selling well at an art show is that, ahem, we don’t have any stock!

My nose requires a bandage and is scabbing over as it’s been forced to the grindstone this past week, but I’ll have to take a philosopher’s approach and say at this point, “It is what it is.”

Snow White recently asked me if I’d ever been introduced to the Green Fairy, otherwise known as Absinthe. I scrolled back through the archives to last year and sent a link to the blog when I wrote about my experience with the licorice tasting cough syrup. While rereading the entry, I realized I have been writing with the assumption that everyone has been with me from the beginning. According to our analytics software, this is not the case.

While it has been reported that leaving comments has proved difficult to impossible for most (Double Exposure and Lulu, my faithful friends, you rock!), the amount of “followers” and comments do not reflect the growing number of readers that check in on a weekly basis. It occurs to me, rather late in the game, that I haven’t necessarily been writing these weekly musings as entire stand-alones.

Oh, there’s the regular cast of characters such as Groom, Kimmmm, God’s Minion, King Zolo, Nanny Bee Bugg and the rest that I expect everyone to keep up with, rarely reminding people who they are. Sometimes I share very personal experiences, at other times it’s our photography with apt quotes, and still others are updates on our going-ons.

Right now, as my thoughts are trying to organize themselves in my brain, I am trying not to be overwhelmed by the laundry still on the line, the stuff that needs to be packed, and all the details that must be attended to before we roll out of town. In other words, I’m making believe that I’m an easy-going person. Uh-oh, Groom is laughing hysterically. Glad I could make his day.

As though this next sentence isn’t completely obvious, it’s the height of summer. I selected these pictures to illustrate the season. Summer to me shouts color! Vibrancy, energy and unabashed monkey love.

Speaking of which, it’s almost our anniversary. Oh, don’t worry, this probably won’t be the last mention of it, but looking through our recent pictures for selection purposes, the one with the rose and the daisy caught my eye. It reminds me of Groom and I: A co-dependent hybrid. We’ve still managed to maintain our own separate identities, but have fused into a single entity. As we approach almost two decades of legal binding, I understand the quote, “And the two shall become one.”

I bought a lottery ticket this morning at around 7am after discovering we ran out of milk, so while walking home from the corner store in the peaceful quiet of the morning, I imagined spending our winnings nurturing the animals of our planet.

While I fantasized about doing good, I couldn’t help but smile as I remembered the look of pure joy upon this dog’s face while he was riding next to us on the freeway behind his motorcycle daddy. I missed the money shot. Our car windows were too smudgy, the sun was coming in at a sharp angle, but I did see the most perfect composition and dang! Imissed it. Oh well, it’s committed to memory and I’m easy-going, remember?

No matter how long I sit here, my clothes are not going to pack themselves. I have no idea if any of these random thoughts tie together, but I do wish all of you good health, a joyous week and we love to hear your charming comments. Thank you for tuning in.

Monkey Mom

This week’s activities included a pre-Mother’s Day tea at a 105 year-old chapel. This historic Cloverdale Meeting House is currently available as a beautiful site for weddings and other social gatherings. In our event, friends congregated to sell wares, sip exotic rose milk, nosh on handmade chocolate and exchange bits of old fashioned gossip. Wanna hear some?

Let’s see…God’s Minion just became a grandmother for the second time (Congratulations!), Kimmmm’s husband is being presented with the Ashden Award for Sustainability (Way to go!), Bo Peep was commissioned by said husband to create a top hat to be worn for his audience with Prince Charles (Yeah, Baby!), Sister was bit bad by a dog (Ouch! Sorry, honey), Chakra Girl is learning to Salsa (move those hips, darlin’), cousin Mary designed us kimono’s from material brought back from Japan (Thank you!) and I overheard a musical friend talk about her “glory hole.”

Conversation was brought to a halt with that one. Huh? Upon further explanation, we learned that a glory hole is a warm place where something hard is put to melt. Yeah, that didn’t really clear things up too much. There might have been something about glass blowing in there as well.

Which brings me to this week’s spelling mishap. I’ve already mentioned Brande Roderick’s flexible use of the American language (remember “forgooed?”), but I think she may have been eliminated from the competition by pulling a Dan Quayle. While expressing frustration, Brande tried to spell crap and came out with “s-r-a-p.”

To rap, er, wrap this up, I’m pretty tired and don’t have the energy to share my windy lesson on intention and resistance. I’d rather snuggle up with Companion and watch “Project Runway,” dish on girls behaving badly (Ms. Joan and Melissa “Oh grow up” Rivers), contemplate who’d make the better, ahem, “coffee” date, the character Patrick Jane on The Mentalist or Detective Sam Tyler from Life on Mars.

I want a full body massage, to be fed chocolate, to sleep for awhile, to have toe-curling “coffee,” and not have to be anywhere or do anything or process information or learn any lessons or be challenged for a little while. Yes, I want to indulge in mindless television without losing brain cells and eat junk food without gaining weight.

On that indulgent note, I’d like to wish all the women out there a Happy Mother’s Day! Whether you diaper a goat (you know who you are), nurse a cat, pamper a dog, or have a human animal, it all counts. We nurture the earth, each other, our men, our creativity, our bodies, our businesses, our minds, our pocket books, our homes, our parents and hopefully, ourselves.

Speaking of moms, I was on the phone last night with Sister, checking on her wounded finger, when she told me this story about our mother that she’d just heard. After the telling, we argued as sisters are wont to do. “No way, that’s not true.”

“Oh, yes it is, go call and ask her yourself.”

“Fine, I will,” etc. etc.

I hung up with Sister and dialed Mother. Okay, more accurately, there was no dialing involved using a cell phone, but it doesn’t sound right to say “I hung up with Sister and punched Mother.”

“Mom, is it true?”

She verified that it was indeed.

“How come I’ve never heard this story before?”

Mom’s reply is so casual, “I don’t know, it didn’t last very long.”

“Tell me what happened!”

“I took Eldest child to the doctor and was holding her in my arms at the check in counter when I felt something tug at my leg. Naturally, I thought it was one of the other kids in the waiting room, but then the sensations dramatically changed and I turned my head just in time to see a monkey climb up my body.”

“A monkey? A real monkey? Are you sure it just wasn’t Sister as a toddler, she was so hairy and cute, you know, or another kid?”

“Oh no, this was way before you or Sister was born. It was a real monkey and all I could think was that it was going for my child.”

“What did you do?

“Oh, I don’t know, I think the woman it belonged to came and got it or something.”

“A monkey is climbing you and you don’t remember what happened?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Yep, that’s my mom, cool under pressure, doesn’t fuss much. If only I could get her to say in an Australian accent, “The monkey took my bay-bay.” Oh never mind. Love you mom.

As Mother’s Day is just around the corner, I’d like to leave you with a quote from the estimable Dan Quayle. “Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.”

Oh, glory hole!

The Journey to Wa

Two out of the “three grandes dames of modern painting in the Americas,” had pet monkeys. Frida Kahlo’s primate was named Fulang-Chang and Emily Carr named hers Woo. I can’t say for certain whether Georgia O’Keeffe had one or not, but besides monster talent, I wonder if having a monkey was part of their secret club handshake?

For those of you who are reading The Everyday Anthropologist for the first time, Companion and I are planning on getting up in the middle of the night and flying to Japan. This trip has been 25 years and two months in the planning. Last week’s installment set up the trip, and for the next two weeks, it is my intention to write in spurts and bursts about where we are and what we’re doing.

Considering we’re going to the Land of Contrasts, a place of ancient traditions and cutting edge technology, we should be able to have access to a computer and the Internet, we just don’t know how often, so stay tuned…

Now, back to the monkeys. As an anthropologist, I’ve often teased that I’m part Simian-American, feeling a kinship with the almost-humans. When I was in Japan as a teenager, the effect I had on the people who had never encountered an American before was that of a chimpanzee in a dress. I was an amusement, an oddity, I mean, who wouldn’t laugh at a talking monkey? I was brought into their homes as a distraction, for entertainment.

Even though I was a curiosity, I fell in love, with the country and the people who opened up their homes and invited me into their lives. And here’s the thing I’m discovering about myself, when I meet and fall in like with somebody, I create a space for them in my heart. The outline is of their shape, their essence and they are the only ones who can fill it. Even if time or distance separate us, I hold space for them. In that capacity, I am fiercely loyal. It doesn’t matter how many other individuals I may encounter, their place in my heart is sacred.

As I mentioned before, the struggle I’m experiencing is trying to integrate the past with the present. I adored my sojourn in 1983 and my head keeps trying to inform me that this is 2009. Everybody and everything has changed.

Speaking of monkeys, didn’t Darwin have a catchy little phrase, something about the “survival of the fittest?” My impression about that has always been the iguana with the biggest bicep wins. But perhaps the notion has more to do with this fortune cookie wisdom, “He who adapts survives.”

Adaptability. Suddenly, the idea intrigues me. Do I possess the emotional intelligence that will allow me to live successfully in a particular environment? The strongest are not always those who are rigid, but those who are flexible. Wow, adaptable and flexible, not the first two words I would use to self-describe.

Japan, a country imbued with Buddhist and Shinto beliefs, infuses Zen coolness into just about everything. We’ve all heard of “monkey mind,” a Buddhist term illustrating a headspace that jumps from thought to thought like a monkey swinging from tree to tree.

The Japanese word for now, the present, is “Ima.” It’s a fun word to say, especially if you draw it out, “Eeeemmaaaaa.” It can easily be said in a Kermit the frog accent or in deep breathy Darth Vaderian. It is my new mantra, since I am currently in possession of a monkey mind. Mine is not content with existing in the present moment, but is much more fascinated with the unending stream of thoughts that pass through like a Mardi Gras parade.

Over the last few days, as I’ve explored my psyche with alien probe determination, I’ve concluded that my Japanese memories are my holy of holies. I have a shrine in the middle of me, dedicated to the people and places I visited.

And then it happened.

My interior walls began to shake and an internal earthquake knocked the sacred figurines off their shelves, smashing them on impact. Oh help, my precious memories! I had a moment of sheer panic and then the calm appeared and with it, an invitation summoning me to the present.

For too long, I’ve allowed my wa, my peace and harmony, to be easily disturbed; by my thoughts, by other people, by external circumstances. It’s time to adapt to the Now, to use my passport and go back to the future and meet up with myself.

And as for my pet monkey, the one in my mind, I think I’ll take a twist on the name Emily Carr gave hers, Woo, and call mine Wa. Aah, peaceful, harmonic monkey mind.

And now, it’s time for us to fly. Iiiiiimmaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!